Today is my birthday and instead of lamenting over being another year older, I decided to be constructive and put together a bucket list. What better way to look forward to the future (and hence, getting older) than focusing on all the stuff I still want to do?

So here we go, in no particular order:

1. Publish a book.
2. Vacation in Greece.
3. Start exploring different campgrounds around the state with our new travel trailer.
4. Get full nights of sleep again (my kids are 3 and 4… it’s gotta happen soon, right?!?)
5. Publish a second book. And a third.
6. Have a library in my office, complete with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and hundreds of books. (And maybe even a sliding ladder so I can pretend to be Belle in Beauty and the Beast.)
7. Road-trip across the country with my husband to see all of the gorgeous landscapes it has to offer.
8. Take my kids to Hawaii — they dream of hula dancing at a luau. How can I refuse such a cute request?
9. Be on a best-sellers list.
10. Read 24 books this year (I’m 1/5 of the way there). And do the same — or more — every year. So many good books out there and so little time!
11. Learn to salsa dance. Or ballroom or swing. (If I can talk my husband into joining me, ha!).
12. Go to Savannah, Georgia. The trees, the architecture, the southern hospitality. What could be better?
13. Take a family trip to Lapland, the northernmost region of Finland, where we can visit Santa’s village and maybe even see the Northern Lights.
14. Listen to my daughters read to me (actually read, not just recite from memory).
15. Go on a cruise.
16. Learn how to cook a turkey and bake a (better-than-just-merely-edible) cake from scratch.
17. Help my children grow up to be compassionate, intelligent, loving, and independent women.
18. See Tim McGraw and Eminem in concert (obviously not at the same concert, although that would be truly epic).
19. Volunteer as a baby cuddler in a NICU.
20. Learn more, laugh more, love more, and live more.

So there is my top 20. Tell me, what’s on your bucket list?